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by Sandee on 6/27/07 [Edited later a little.]
Download the podcast of last Saturday’s Good Food radio show, where they interviewed Eugenie about gluten-free baking and The Sensitive Baker!! Yay! Thank you SO much, everyone at KCRW! You have no idea how many people you sent our way!
We knew they taped it, obviously, but not when they would air it, that’s why I didn’t alert you to listen for it. But if you missed it, you can listen online.
I just have to take back one thing…
While we really do try to have something for everyone as Eugenie said, sometimes people with multiple food allergies have not had anything to eat, or had just one item that they could eat. Like, with the muffins, this one has eggs, that one has soy, the other one is egg-free AND soy-free, but contains nuts. The vegan bread and the vegan pizza crust both have no eggs and no nuts, but contain traces of soy from the lecithin in the pan spray.
We wish from the bottoms of our hearts that we really could bake for everyone, but as Alice Leonard of Angel Food Bakery (a gluten-free vegan bakery in New Zealand) once said to me, if we only served things that no-one was allergic to, all we could offer people would be a glass of water!
The fact is, if you’re allergic to everything, I recommend a wonderful company called “Enjoy Life Foods.” They do all kinds of baked goods; you can find them at Whole Foods and other grocers and online. There are hundreds of other products from other fine companies that you can order online, as I said in a previous post. If we attempted food that was free of everything, I’m sure it would not be as good as theirs is, and they already have pretty packaging.
To make what we make, you need to put in something. To make what we make you’ve got to put a lot of very fine things like almond meal and almond milk, and whole eggs from local cage-free chickens, and extra egg whites (ditto), and organic non-hydrogenated palm shortening, or organic-sunflower or -extra-virgin-olive oil. And lots and lots of organic evaporated cane juice. Not everyone can eat those things. We always try to have enough variety that everyone can eat something, but it is a humbling experience. I am continually and constantly awed by the multiple allergies that some people have to deal with.
Remember, also, that we are a very small bakery and some cross-contamination may occur with any of the ingredients we work with. We use good manufacturing practices to ensure that doesn’t happen, but in the same way that some people need a dedicated gluten-free facility, there are people who should only eat food cooked in dedicated nut-free facilities.
[Edited to add: We are completely PEANUT-FREE though. I forgot to mention that. Gluten-free, casein-free, and peanut-free. And mollusk-free.]
